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the only
black man in my unit, which reminded me of my childhood
in rural Indiana, and the harder the water confidence training became, the
higher those dark waters would rise until it seemed I was also being
drowned from the inside out. While the rest of my class was sleeping, that
potent cocktail of fear and rage thrummed through my veins and my
nocturnal fixations became their own kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. One
where failure was inevitable because my unchecked fear was unleashing
something I couldn’t control: the quitting mind.
It all came to a head six weeks into training with the “buddy breathing”
exercise. We partnered up, each pair gripped one another by the forearm,
and took turns breathing through just one snorkel. Meanwhile, the
instructors thrashed us, trying to separate us from our snorkel. All of this
was supposed to be happening at or near the surface, but I was negatively
buoyant, which meant I was sinking into the middle waters of the deep end,
dragging my partner down with me. He’d take a breath and pass the snorkel
down to me. I’d swim to the surface, exhale and attempt to clear the water
from our snorkel and get a clean breath before passing it back to him, but
the instructors made that almost impossible. I’d usually only clear the tube
halfway, and inhale more water than air. From the jump, I was operating
from an oxygen deficit while fighting to stay near the surface.
In military training, it’s the instructors’ job to identify weak links and
challenge them to perform or quit, and they could tell I was struggling. In
the pool that day, one of them was always in my face, yelling and thrashing
me, while I choked, trying and failing to gulp air through a narrow tube to
stave off the wizard. I went under and remember looking up at the rest of
the class, splayed out like serene starfish on the surface. Calm as can be,
they passed their snorkels back and forth with ease, while I fumed. I know
now that my instructor was just doing his job, but back then I thought,
This
fucker’s not giving me a fair shot!
I passed that evolution too, but I still had eleven more evolutions and four
more weeks of water confidence training to go. It made sense. We would be
jumping out of airplanes over water. We needed it. I just didn’t want to do it
anymore, and the next morning, I was offered a way out I hadn’t seen
coming.
Weeks earlier, we’d had our blood drawn during a med check, and the
doctors had just discovered I carried the Sickle Cell Trait. I didn’t have the
disease, Sickle Cell Anemia, but I had the trait, which was believed at the
time to increase the risk of sudden, exercise-related death due to cardiac
arrest. The Air Force didn’t want me dropping dead in the middle of an
evolution and pulled me out of training on a medical. I pretended to take the
news hard, as if my dream was being ripped away. I made a big fucking act
of being pissed off, but inside I was ecstatic.
Later that week the doctors reversed their decision. They didn’t specifically
say it was safe for me to continue, but they said the trait wasn’t yet well
understood and allowed me to decide for myself. When I reported back to
training the Master Sergeant (MSgt) informed me that I’d missed too much
time and that if I wanted to continue I would have to start over from day
one, week one. Instead of less than four weeks, I’d have to endure another
ten weeks of the terror, rage, and insomnia that came with water confidence.
These days, that kind of thing wouldn’t even register on my radar. You tell
me to run longer and harder than everyone else just to get a fair shake, I’d
say, “Roger that,” and keep moving, but back then I was still half-baked.
Physically I was strong, but I was not even close to mastering my mind.
The MSgt stared at me, awaiting my response. I couldn’t even look him in
the eye when I said, “You know what, Master Sergeant, the doctor doesn’t
know much about this Sickle Cell thing, and it’s bothering me.”
He nodded, emotionless, and signed the papers pulling me out of the
program for good. He cited Sickle Cell, and on paper I didn’t quit, but I
knew the truth. If I had been the guy I am today, I wouldn’t have given two
fucks about Sickle Cell. I still have the Sickle Cell Trait. You don’t just get
rid of it, but back then an obstacle had appeared, and I’d folded.
I moved on to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, told my friends and family that I
was forced from the program on a medical, and served out my four years in
the Tactical Air Control Party (TAC-P), which works with some special
operations units. I trained to liaise between ground units and air support—
fast movers like F-15s and F-16s—behind enemy lines. It was challenging
work with intelligent people, but sadly I was never proud of it and didn’t
see the opportunities offered because I knew I was a quitter who had let fear
dictate my future.
I buried my shame in the gym and at the kitchen table. I got into
powerlifting and layered on the mass. I ate and worked out. Worked out and
ate. In my last days in the Air Force I weighed 255 pounds. After my
discharge I continued to bulk up with both muscle and fat until I weighed
nearly 300 pounds. I wanted to be big because being big hid David
Goggins. I was able to tuck this 175-pound person into those 21-inch biceps
and that flabby belly. I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to
everyone who saw me, but inside I knew I was a pussy, and that’s a
haunting feeling.
After Air Force Boot Camp at 175 lbs in 1994
290 lbs at the beach in 1999
* * *
The morning I began to take charge of my destiny started out like any other.
When the clock struck 7 a.m., my Ecolab shift ended and I hit the Steak ’n
Shake drive-thru to score a large chocolate milkshake. Next stop, 7-Eleven,
for a box of Hostess mini chocolate doughnuts. I gobbled those on my
forty-five-minute drive home, to a beautiful apartment on a golf course in
pretty Carmel, Indiana, which I shared with my wife, Pam, and her
daughter. Remember that Pizza Hut incident? I married that girl. I married a
girl whose dad called me a nigger. What does that say about me?
We couldn’t afford that life. Pam wasn’t even working, but in those credit-
card-debt-loading days, nothing made much sense. I was doing 70 mph on
the highway, mainlining sugar and listening to a local classic rock station
when
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